This invention relates to automatic devices intended to maintain toilet bowls in a clean and sanitary condition without requiring any manual or mechanical action such as scrubbing with a brush.
In my co-pending application above identified there is disclosed a toilet bowl spray cleaner which does not require brushing, comprising a plastic squeeze bottle containing a strong bleaching solution and having a pivoted spout in the closure, to enable the solution to be easily and quickly sprayed on the exposed bowl surfaces, after which flushing is not done for a number of hours to enable the bleaching solution to act on the surfaces and dissolve any contaminating deposits. With this spray cleaner, good results are obtained if the spray application is made each night before retiring, so that the next flushing of the toilet occurs the following morning. This gives the chemical bleach solution a goodly amount of time to react on the bowl surfaces. However, such cleaning procedure requires the housewife or other person to apply the spray solution to the bowl daily or almost so, in order that the cleaning action is effective.
So-called "automatic" bowl cleaners are presently marketed, comprising containers or jars having granules of a bleaching chemical such as sodium or calcium hypochlorite. These jars are intended to be opened and then placed in the bottom of the tank of the toilet, underneath the float. The action of the water on the chemical granules causes a dispersion of the hypochlorite in the tank water, and each time that the toilet is flushed, the charged water in the tank passes over the exposed bowl surfaces and re-acts on the same, presumably to keep such surfaces clean. The bleaching solution in the tank is designated as being safe for plumbing. Such devices can last as long as three or four months, corresponding roughly to 2,000 or more flushes. When the chemical is all used up, the jar must be removed from the bottom of the tank before it can be replaced by a new, freshly-opened jar.
While these automatic jar devices did not require the daily attention of the maintenance person, they were inconvenient to install since the user had to remove the tank cover completely and get one hand and arm wet when placing the jar in the water under the float. Also, the previous empty jar, if there was one, required removal each time prior to being replaced with a new jar. The user was thus under any circumstance always required to reach into the tank water, and this constituted an undesirable aspect of these devices.
So far as I am aware, efforts to provide other types of automatic water-treatment devices acting like the above jars but where the containers did not require removal, such as wherein the active chemical could be in the form of a solid cake which would ultimately dissolve without residue, have not been successful.
In the case of a solid cake of chemicals, it is not possible, according to my knowledge, to retard the dissolving to an extent sufficient to provide a useful life of at least a month or more. I believe that the porosity of any solid cake will defeat a sufficiently slow, dissolving action since the water in which the cake is immersed permeates quite readily throughout the entire body of the cake; thus the solid structural formation of the cake weakens whereby the usual swirling action of the water in the tank quickly disperses the active chemicals, which are then undesirably prematurely flushed down the drain. As at present understood, no sufficiently-slow dissolving action is possible, in a solid cake containing an active, water soluble chemical. The hypochlorite by its very nature tends to readily dissolve in moving water, thereby defeating the desired objective of a very slowly dissolving cake of chemical substance.
In consequence, all prior automatic toilet bowl cleaners of the type intended to be used in the tank, to my knowledge employed some type of non-soluble or non-disintegrating container such as of plastic or glass which was immersed in the water, and which had to be removed after the contained chemical ceased to function. This applying and removing operation constituted a messy and troublesome chore. Usually water would drip from the container being removed, requiring a cleaning-up operation of the floor around the toilet bowl. The prior devices always required that the user get his or her hands wet, in initially installing or else in replacing the devices.